The secret sauce behind high quality scores and SEM

…And why should you even care?

WHY? Because Google tells us to. Anyone who has been involved with PPC (pay per click also known as search engine marketing) knows that advertisers who bid on the same key word are fighting for share of voice. The cost per click that you pay on any of the search engines, but most importantly Google, is determined by several key factors, including your landing page, the page your ad links to.

For example, let’s say you are the marketing director at a law firm in New York City, and want to promote your Intellectual Property practice. Searching on Google returns 900,000 results. Yes, that’s right, 900,000! Ok, there aren’t 900,000 IP attorneys in NYC, but you get my drift. However, if you look at the image below, we see that there are a few sponsored links that appear. Your team has no control over the order in which these ads appear unless you are the highest bidder on that keyword. That means you can be paying as much as $20 PER CLICK on the IP Attorneys, NYC. And that $20 is only for a click, not an actual lead! However, the order in which your ad appears, in addition to the cost per click you pay, is determined by Google’s (and Yahoo’s and Bing’s) secret algorithm. But there ARE ways of creating better landing pages and ads, hence lowering your cost per click and raising both the positioning of the ad as well as the frequency with which your ad appears.

The BIG THREE:

#1: Your landing page should have the same keywords as your ad. This is the number 1 influencer on your cost per click.

#2: Create more compelling text. That is correct – the higher your click response, the higher your quality score, the lower your cost per click. We know this sounds like a circle, and it IS, but it is also the way cost per click campaigns work.

#3: The less clicks a user has to go through to get to what they are looking for, the higher your quality store. Example: I search for “IP Attorneys in NYC”. I should land on a page that not only discusses the IP Practice, but also offers a one click solution to contact your office.